I always thought that Chinese influencers and media on platforms like YouTube, international TikTok, and Instagram were engaging in illegal activities in China, until recently when I spoke to an influencer who clarified that it’s actually not illegal in China. She operates her Youtube channel under a company that can legally use a VPN.
Based on my research into the law, here are the conditions for legally using a VPN in China:
1.Legally Established Company: The VPN service provider must be a legally established company in China.
2.Minimum Registered Capital: For nationwide service, the minimum registered capital is RMB 10 million (about USD 1.5 million). For provincial services, it’s RMB 1 million (about USD 150,000).
3.Feasibility Study and Technical Plan: Applicants must submit a feasibility study report and a detailed technical plan for the service.
4.Compliance Record: The company, its major investors, and key management personnel must not have violated telecommunication regulations in the past three years.
Different bandwidth options offered by the three major telecom operators in China. For instance, a 2 Mbps connection costs approximately RMB 20,000 (about USD 3,000) per year, a 10 Mbps connection is around RMB 50,000 (about USD 7,500) per year, and a 500 Mbps connection could cost about RMB 1.4 million (about USD 210,000) per year.
This means that these are requirements that ordinary people cannot meet, but for influencers with millions of followers, they are actually not violating Chinese law.
And afaik those rules only apply to companies providing VPN to customers. Most foreign organizations don’t fall under the VPN regulations because VPN is internal use only for employees. Depending on the corporate network usage policy some individuals might therefore legally use corporate VPN to access YouTube etc.
The prices are a little too expensive. We have access to two different nodes in our company, we had to ask for some sites to be open, like Wikipedia, we still can’t access most news sites but social media and etc no problem.
I doubt our company paid over a million for the speed we have
China, a country of 1.4 billion, where one needs a VPN because the CCP has decided that the human right to unfiltered information is too dangerous for their population to consume.
I’m pretty sure that in practice “Minimum Registered Capital” just means if your company goes under, how much debt your company’s shareholders are willing to take personally. You don’t need to show any proof that you actually worth that much or have that amount of money.
A VPN just means virtual private network, you don’t need a VPN to access the worldwide internet in China per se, you need an unblocked connection. This law refers to VPN services, you can also get an unblocked connection for a fee through their providers. How you do that, im not sure but you can go through the process to get that for business.
Its not illegal at all to use vpn in china. Whoever told you that is wrong. Maybe what you posted is rules for vpn companies, but definitely not vpn users.
Vpn in china is just like any other computer program-- it is not illegal to have or use, but it is illegal to do something illegal while using it.
Edit: anyone downvoting please post a chinese law saying it is illegal for individuals to use vpn. I will immediately update my comment and apologize.
I will be very suprised if you can though. There are laws about what you are allowed to use vpn to do, and individuals have gotten in trouble for using a vpn. There is no law saying vpn itself is illegal for individuals, the laws quoted are indeed aimed at businesses.
This is not at all a support for the way china does things when it comes to vpn, to be very clear. And the fact individuals get in trouble for using vpn when it isn’t actually stated as illegal follows a chinese theme of certain issues. It is a fact there is no law making it illegal though, and few people get in trouble for the act of having a vpn itself.
As a native Chinese, I’ve found too much such misinterpretion of the China’s GFW.
its not illegal for the folk to use vpn. But its illegal for the folk to post illegal information. What’s illegal information? Anti-government one and such sorts of.
It’ not appropriate to discuss and search for the policy-related inf in a restricted environment.
I dislike such GFW but start to comprehend the meaning of it. Think about the 1.4 billion population and you will find the philosophy.
The much wise way to address such problem for now may be taxing the Internet service like what other countries doing now. How long will be taken for the restriction to complete its duty? idk. Wait to see.
eh, i’ve been using VPN in china for years now and so far nothings happened. just don’t be a dumbass sharing sensitive information or make sensitive comments.
This is true, but my company get it through China Mobile. We opt in for the option for the services available to R&D and technical personnel and only desktop PC can do it. Not sure about the price.
It is not technically VPN, they just open a door for you through the firewall. They will as well monitor your activities. No funny stuff.
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how China works. Chinese state-run media has official Youtube channels. Here’s Hunan TV for example. Chinese officials are on Twitter. Many Chinese researchers also have free internet access in their universities. These restrictions are only for the plebs and critics of the system. It’s like North Korea where the leadership has internet access, but just on much larger scale and less strict. Trying to read Chinese legal texts as if anything can be learned from them is fool’s work. None of this is according the “law”. There is no rule of law in China, there’s rule of CCP.
If you’re doing something the CCP approves of - for example an influencer producing content in their favor - you’re very much welcome to use a VPN to do it.
or 
sim card. There is quite a selection of carriers offering affordable plans.